For the population as a whole, not any single group. There are too many folks with differing needs and wants. I believe that a mix of commercial and charitable entities is the best way to go.
How do you account for the fact that there are other countries that do seem to be able to accomplish the goal of delivering healthcare (relatively) efficiently and humanely?
I would say that things are rarely what they seem and that government run healthcare systems will universally show themselves to be neither efficient nor humane upon closer examination.
I recognize that you have longstanding beef with the Church.
Nobody should be forced to provide anything to anyone they don’t wish to, that said, I think you’d find less discrimination on that front that you realize. That said, I’m not advocating healthcare being fully under the purview of the Church. I’m simply saying that the Church has abdicated responsibility for a role that it is commanded to perform.
I find most of modern society is the bit that is intolerable. So I don’t think we’re going to find much common ground here.
Do you have any particular systems in mind, that have been shown to be less efficient and humane than they are perceived to be? I‘m not accepting “the UK” as an answer since that system was not so much revealed as (deliberately) destroyed over time.
Perhaps we should try electing people who aren't sociopaths at some point, jesus christ.
I think this is ultimately why I deactivated FB. I would post something and my friends (who didn't know each other) would fight on my feed, or I would get so many horrible things about people hurting others who aren't in the same political party. It's this idea of people "coming for" other people just because they are democrat or republican. That hurt my heart that people could be so cruel and awful as to wish death on others. The reason I engage in politics is to hopefully help people, not harm them. It's sad to me when we can't even talk about the real problems because of bi-partisanship.
Have you looked into the German model of healthcare? It's something that I think could work here. There's a mix of public and private option. The biggest push back I am seeing in this arena is from private health care. There have been grumblings among progressives that an actual public option should be made available, and that option would be priced much less than the commercial plans currently available in private insurance because there wouldn't be any shareholders. It's a neat idea that could work, but this would put tremendous pressure on the big insurers to either lower prices or actually provide a service that people are willing to pay a little more for. The biggest problem in healthcare today is cost containment. This could be alleviated by more competition, but given the amount of clinics and doctors large hospital systems have and the stranglehold large private insurers have on the market, the barrier to entry is immense. We need to break apart a lot of these big institutions based on the criteria in the Sherman Act (anti-trust laws that have been on the books for quite a while) and create a better environment for competition. But we should not sacrifice people's health needs for competition's sake.
There are a few organizations that focus on the LGBTQ community, but there are things like the Ryan White program that support people living with HIV/AIDS that I'm not sure who would step up and take this over if there was no federal support.
Actually, I'm sort of in favor of them reading the bill. If you are going to pass a bill that's this big, you should have to read it and you should have to attend the reading prior to it being passed. I think they should do this for every bill. I get that this delays checks, but this foot dragging is the same tactic the democrats used in November/December to delay those checks. The checks are not popular with the ruling class. Neither side wants us to have them.
I'm find with reading the whole bill. That does not bother me. What bother's me is the days long game of delays he has planned after reading the bill.
No offense taken!
Joe is correct in his assessment of my views. I am opposed to government control of most everything based on principle. Also, government attracts the worst of the worst people along with the well meaning. The terrible people are just way more competent and accumulating power and influence.
As long as government is in the business of regulating the buying and selling of things, the first things to be bought and sold will be the politicians. The only way to get rid of the corrupting influence of big money in government is to make it so government can’t hand out favors to pick winners and losers.
